Discover the three best tips to learn Spanish if you have online Spanish classes with a teacher.
Think.
Think, think, think…
Thinking is an action that requires concentration, tranquillity, information, ideas and… time.
Thinking takes time.
Sometimes, a long time.
In our Spanish classes, I, as your teacher, am not in a rush, I have nothing more important or urgent to do at that moment than be with you working and improving your Spanish.
So, when you need to think about the answers to a grammar or conversational activity… Or you’re trying to remember that exact vocabulary word you need: take your time, there’s no rush.
In our classes, your brain is working at high intensity with a language that is not your mother tongue.
And for that, it needs time.
The important thing is to construct a phrase in Spanish to convey your message.
That is a great achievement!
A great success!
That means one thing: you are speaking Spanish!
So, this is the first of the best tips to learn Spanish: in our Spanish classes there is no rush, take your time to think.
In our Spanish classes, we do a lot of activities to practise your writing.
Especially when we finish a unit, which is when you have to write a text of between 130 – 150 words using what you have learned in that unit.
Sounds familiar, right? 😉
Afterwards, there are two options:
Do you know what is the most important and the best thing about your texts in Spanish?
YOUR MISTAKES
When you write you can see visually how you are speaking in Spanish.
When practising conversational activities, everything goes a little fast and your teacher corrects the most relevant errors and we work on them in class.
But there are other tiny errors that we don’t examine in our conversation activities.
However, when you write… It’s all there!
We can go slowly, looking at the order of the words, the gender, the number, the prepositions…
That is why written expression activities are so important and this is the second of the best tips to learn Spanish: pay attention to how you write because it is a reflection of how you speak in Spanish.
When we are in class, please do not use Google Translator.
Instead, use your teacher.
The most skilled and expert students using computers and technology copy the word (or phrase) that they do not understand, paste it into Google Translator and read the translation in their native language while we are in class.
When you do this in an online Spanish class, two things happen.
The first (and most important) is that you learn NOTHING.
Google Translator is fast + easy + comfortable = You don’t learn.
The second is that your teacher doesn’t know what your specific questions are, so she can’t help you.
She can’t teach you effectively then.
It is a bad habit that some Spanish students have and that we have to try to correct.
Therefore, I want to explain an example to you, so you can see how to learn new words effectively with a qualified teacher.
Student: ¿Qué significa “farola”?
Gloria: Una farola es un objeto que hay en las calles o en los parques y que sirve para dar luz por la noche.
Student: **Face of not understanding anything 😑😳**
Gloria: No te preocupes, un momentito.
Gloria finds the image online and pastes it into the class document.
FAROLA
Gloria: Muy bien, esto es una farola. Algunas palabras relacionadas con “farola” son “parque”, “calle”, “dar luz”, “noche”… Vamos a practicar. ¿Puedes decir un ejemplo con la palabra “farola”?
This process is not fast, it is not easy and it is not comfortable, but you are going to learn a new word in Spanish.
Well, this is the third of the best tips to learn Spanish, in your Spanish class do not use Google Translator, use your teacher.
Your teacher can give you many and very good tips for learning Spanish, but they are useless if you do not apply them.
I remember that after sending a newsletter with one of the tips that I have shared on my blog (“warm up before your class”), I had a class with one of my students and at the end I congratulated her on how well she had done. Then, she told me that she had “warmed up her brain” five minutes before our class.
Brilliant!
If you want to learn Spanish in a well-structured way, with the guidance of an accredited native teacher, and practising key skills such as conversation, you can take a look at our Spanish class catalogue or you can take a look at our Membership Programme.
Book your trial class with us today and meet your teacher!
